Australian Open moves play with 40C heat expected

The Australian Open will begin play on Saturday at the Australian Open if Melbourne’s temperatures are forecast to be 40C.

Instead of the customary 11:00 start, play will begin on all courts at 10:30 local time (23:30 GMT).

Melbourne and the state of Victoria have been issued with a severe heatwave warning by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

If the Australian Open’s heat stress scale exceeds five, play will be suspended.

Tommy Paul, the 19th seed in the American men’s division, said, “It’s not very fun playing in those temperatures.”

The scale considers four variables: wind speed, relative humidity, air temperature in the shade, and sun’s ray strength.

Matches at Rod Laver Arena, Margaret Court Arena, and John Cain Arena will stop if a five is recorded on the heat stress scale, preventing the roof from being closed before play can continue.

Madison Keys, the reigning champion of women’s tennis, and Czech ex-world number one Karolina Pliskova, the defending champion, open play on Laver.

The first-time winners on Court and Cain include another American seed, Jessica Pegula, and fifth-seed Lorenzo Musetti from Italy.

Ballroom kids will rotate 45 minutes instead of the typical one hour, with an increased one-and-a-half hour break between shifts.

Melbourne Park’s third-round games on Saturday are anticipated to draw a 100, 000-person crowd.

The Australian Open claims that there will be facilities throughout the site to help visitors cool off, including:

The singles quarter-finals are scheduled to begin on Tuesday, with temperatures expected to top 40C.

The fourth round of the match, which takes place on Sunday against Canadian teenager Victoria Mboko, is a “huge adjustment” for the strings and your approach to the game, according to Sabalenka.

The heat may cause Melbourne to experience some play over the weekend or early in the week.

However, the city will experience some extreme temperature swings, which won’t be without exception.

Melbourne’s location on Australia’s south-east coast is all that, in part.

A quick change in wind direction can result in you reaching for a fan one day and pulling your jumper the next. The desert interior is north, and Antarctica and the Southern Ocean are south.

Any wind coming in from a northward direction will bring that searing heat with it because the interior of Australia quickly heats up in the summer.

However, any switch to southerly wind will blow in air from a sea, which is the city’s equivalent of natural air conditioning, which is 16 to 18 degrees Celsius this time of year.